


Hope is the thing with feathers

by middlemarch



Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Angst, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Vignette, implied reference to current US politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 06:19:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11617722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: As darkness falls.





	Hope is the thing with feathers

“Sam?” 

She was sitting on the bench by the front door to the police station, everything about her somewhat…off. Her uniform was creased where it usually wasn’t and the drape of her hem was uneven, a button undone near her throat and wisps of her hair, dulled in the fading light of an overcast and chilly day, had escaped her Victory roll and the confines of her cap. Her neck was bowed and she did not lift her eyes when he spoke, not right away. That was the most unlike her, the lack of response and the shadow in her gaze when she did, a moment later, look up at him.

“Oh, uh, sir,” she said, murmured really. Foyle remembered how she had been when she had been ill, how her voice had been raspy and how he had easily read the pain and fear of it, and the fear of it ceasing, in her drawn face, the furrow in her brow.

“I told you I’d walk home, you needn’t have waited,” he said, more gentle than he would have been once, but perhaps only he could perceive the alteration; she startled at his words, one hand clutching at the other laid on top. Had she been praying? He could ask many questions but not that one.

“What should you do, if all hope is lost?” she blurted out, biting her lip, looking very young, even younger than when she was hungry for a bun or cakes or a proper Christmas dinner. And yet, there were so many, too many reasons for it, the question and her appearance, the way she reminded him of a faded rose.

“Some turn to their faith,” he said, inclining his head towards her folded hands, considering the vicarage she’d grown up in and the seemingly infinite number of curates and parsons, reverends and vicars scattered throughout the British isles who were relatives, cousins by marriage, uncles, her father, whose voice had carried up the stairs to her room as surely as from his pulpit.

“And if that’s lost too, if it ever was there in the first place?” she asked. Now she looked older, now he saw how she might look long years hence, when he had been dead and buried for decades; he saw the way her eyes were set in her face and the narrow strength of her neck, the delicacy of her wrists.

“You do what you can, all you can, whatever work you can find, however small, however grand,” he replied.

“Even if you don’t believe it?” 

“Even then. But not alone,” he said, laying a hand on her uniformed shoulder. He felt the warmth and tension in her under the rough wool and how she was somehow less surprised by his gesture than she had been by his words.

“Not alone,” she repeated, like a student at her lessons, as if she were trying his words out, assessing him as he so often evaluated others.

“No. We’re not, not as much as we expect. There’s very often someone else ready to lend a hand, I find,” he said. “And a cup of tea helps.”

“It does?” she laughed, almost helplessly. He cursed his son and wished someone was speaking as much sense to him, pushing over the mug of black tea that Andrew would wish sweeter. He thought of Milner, how he’d mentioned Sam before he left _She’s waiting for you, sir_ , with such deliberate consideration Foyle had known something else was meant.

“Certainly. Now then,” he said, squeezing her shoulder slightly, swiftly, and letting his hand drop, tilting his head towards the door that kept the night out. He could do with a bit of company too and the comfort of steam, the meditation of the milk unwinding in the cup, the discovery of what it would require to see the return of her fortitude, her irrepressible vitality, her smile, small but true.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Emily Dickinson. I'm trying to channel some of my frantically frustrated energy around the current attack on US healthcare into fan fiction because, of course? May everyone in a similar situation find your own Foyle.


End file.
